Growing Software

Define the Product Using Prototypes

The marketing group's first attempt at product definition provides a high-level view of the customer's requirements. This definition does not include enough detail for engineering to build the product, however; several additional layers of information are required to help you build a solution. Engineering must create working definitions of the product's user interface (UI), application programming interface (API), and business logic. The most expensive way to create such working-level definitions is for individual engineers to decide how to build the software, build it, and then present the results to marketing. Invariably, this approach leads to several expensive cycles of rework. A better way is to spend the ...